For design researchers, there is a pivotal moment when you discover that the part of design you love the most can also be a career. For most, especially those who come from a design background, it’s a strange, convoluted path to discover design research because even today, few undergraduates experience it. For myself and my colleagues, we found our path with the help of a few professionals who gave us guidance or took a chance on us. We’re grateful to these mentors and for the chance to help guide the next generation of design researchers.

In the fall semester of 2015, Michelle Avelis, Chris Brown, and I took on the challenge of giving 30 undergraduate product design students real-world design research experience in collaboration with Virginia Tech.

CoLab then partnered with outdoor retailer REI to sponsor a student project to address this skill gap while exploring what the future of tents could be. Professional design researchers, REI designers, and students met together to outline what they wanted to learn from consumers. Equipped with the tools and techniques needed to uncover these unmet needs and latent desires, students formed small collaborative teams to interview consumers and discover insights.

When reflecting on the experience, Virginia Tech student Carly Landers said, “This design research class exposed us to what the research field should be. It opened my eyes to that side of the design process, and the quality of my design work has soared because of it. Without this kind of research and feedback from the real users, designers wouldn’t know what direction to take. This is the epitome of uman-centered design.”

Daniel Perry and Sarah Kemp conduct a co-creation activity with a consumer recruited for the study.

Over the next 3 months, CoLab’s Design Research practitioners coached student teams in conducting participatory research with tent owners, and guided them through synthesizing their findings into design principles and sacrificial concepts to evaluate with consumers.

Students were challenged to refrain from diving into the typical refinement phase, and instead select multiple concepts brainstormed to be evaluated with users. These concepts were measured against the design criteria established by consumers in the generative research, and the feedback was used to refine the best concept.

Adam Bujnowski and David Barret visualized how their two concepts scored with consumers based on metrics developed by consumer’s during the exploratory research phase in the class.

The class introduced industrial design students to the type of research they will potentially be receiving as designers and gave budding design researchers an understanding of how to make research actionable for designers. For a few students, the class introduced them to a new potential career. After the class, Virginia Tech student Carly Landers joined the REI design research team as a summer intern.

Learning about design research early can help change the course of a career, and knowing that inspires us to keep reaching out to students. We encourage all professionals to give back, help the next generation, and make a positive impact. Connect with a student on LinkedIn. Reach out to a school to be a guest speaker for a class. Talk to your company about sponsoring a project. Anyone can help a student. All it takes is one person to be there in a pivotal moment.

So here you are, a product design student interested in design research. You want to pursue a career in design research, but your portfolio is heavily product design focussed. Below are opportunities in the typical product design portfolio to highlight your understanding of and experience with the design research process:

1 / The Problem Statement Page:

How did you identify the problem you are solving for? Did you talk to any users? Did you ask them about their current experience?

// We want to know their likes and dislikes with their current experience. We want to hear from the user what the problem is that you are designing for. Visualize their current process, identifying the pain points and love points.

2/ The Target User Page

How did you select who to talk to? Did you ask them about their current experience?

// We want to know who the user is. What they look like and where they are from. Highlight demographical information on the user (i.e. age, geographic region, financial bracket, etc.).

3/ The Competitive Analysis Page

Did you do secondary research? Did you identify who was doing well in the marketplace and why? Did you identify gaps in the current marketplace?

// We want to see that you classified and organized types of information that you collected. Organize products in the current-marketplace by the benefits they are delivering to users.

4/ The Mood Board Page

Why did you pull these images for inspiration?

// We want to know what the visual and functional criteria were that drove the imagery selection. Group the imagery by their prominent design details and explain your thought process behind the groupings.

5/ The Prototype Page

Did you ask people for feedback on your mock-up? Did you use their feedback to refine the design?

// We want to see what individuals said and want to know what the synthesized feedback was. Annotate the different prototypes with the feedback received on them.